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I refer to the article ("Central fears", August 12) by Victor Zheng, Fanny Cheung, and Po-san Wan of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia Pacific Studies at Chinese University, summarising a survey done by the institute regarding Hong Kong people's opinion on the Occupy Central campaign.

The article said the survey found, "an overwhelming 75.7 per cent of people said the campaign would not be able to get the central government to accept the campaigners' plan, while only 3.7 per cent said it would".

I hope the Occupy Central people read this survey result and understand that most Hong Kong people do not think what they are doing will be of any help in the constitutional reform for the 2017 chief executive election.

It is extremely odd in any negotiation that one party would say to the other, unless you agree to what I want, I will sit down on the floor of your office and refuse to leave until you agree.

What is even worse in the case of Occupy Central is that up to now they still have not come up with "what they want", and it does not look likely that they will come up with it any time soon.

Only children make threats in negotiations and they never win, but the people involved with the Occupy Central movement are professors in our universities.

If these professors really want to do something to help Hong Kong, they should withdraw their threats now, and concentrate on coming up with a reasonable and workable nomination method for the 2017 election.

Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, president of the Legislative Council, appearing on a recent ATV Newsline programme, said: "If not a single pan-democrat candidate will be allowed to run in the 2017 chief executive election by universal suffrage, Hong Kong will be ungovernable afterwards."

I think most reasonable Hong Kong people hold this view.

The pro-government and the pan-democrat legislators should start working together to come up with a mutually acceptable method of nomination.

The model must not be one which will screen out all pan-democratic candidates.

If the two sides cannot reach agreement on the method of nomination for the 2017 election candidates, then any model of nomination method which the government presents to the legislature will not garner the necessary two-thirds vote to get passed.

The inevitable result would be that we wouldn't have universal suffrage for the 2017 chief executive election.